An application-layer multicasting protocol for distributed collaboration

Although IP multicast can be used to support message transmission among participants in massively large virtual environments, it is typically not available on the Internet. Alternatively, researches have in recent years proposed the use of application layer multicasting techniques (ALM), either using proxies or purely depending on end systems, to allow scalable message passing among peers in a large group of users on the Internet. We propose a hybrid application-layer multicast framework that uses both proxies and end-systems to provide scalable and timely-reliable communication among the participants of a distributed virtual environment over the Internet. Our filed trials using a simulation application shows that the framework performs satisfactorily over the Internet.